Privacy notice - Food Hygiene Rating Scheme

Why we need it

The Food Standards Agency is what is known as the ‘Controller’ of the personal data provided to us. The personal information we hold on you consists of: the name of the food business operator, the registered business address and the business telephone number. The Food Standards Agency obtains this information from local authorities.

We need to collect this information for the purpose of publishing food hygiene ratings. We also combine the information with business insight data supplied by a market intelligence provider, in order to carry out analysis. We do this in line with the performance of our official duties in the exercise of the official authority vested in us and in the public interest. We will not collect any personal data from you which we do not need.

What we do with it

We retain personal information only for as long as necessary to carry out these functions, and in line with our retention policy. This means that this information will be retained for review after 10 years.

All the personal data we process is located on servers within the European Union. Our cloud based services have been procured through the government framework agreements and these services have been assessed against the national cyber security centre cloud security principles.

No third parties have access to your personal data unless the law allows them to do so. In line with this commitment your information may be passed to HM Revenue and Customs, should a schedule 23 notice be issued to require us to do so.

In addition, the Food Standards Agency will sometimes share data with other government departments, public bodies, and organisations which perform public functions to assist them in the performance of their statutory duties or when it is in the public interest.

We use or work with contractors and other third-party service providers, such as IT service providers, who will process your personal data on our behalf. These third parties are our data processors and can only process your personal data on our instruction or with our agreement for a specified purpose to enable us to maintain, improve and provide our services in order to fulfil our public task.

Your rights

You have a right to see the information we hold on you by making a request in writing to the email address below. If at any point you believe the information we process on you is incorrect you can request to have it corrected. If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact our Data Protection Officer who will investigate the matter.

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).